Driver had a gun
Bro of Bronx hit-run susp was killed nearby
A Bronx motorist who critically injured a 16-year-old bicyclist before crashing into a parked NYPD SUV had showed up at the scene, armed with a gun, where his younger brother had been killed in January, the Daily News has learned.
Deshaun Grier, 21, was arrested at Jacobi Medical for the Tuesday hit-and-run crash on Webster Ave. near E. Gun Hill Road in Norwood. The crash occurred down the block from his home — and the spot where his brother Kahlik Grier, 16, was gunned down Jan. 11.
Grier was driving a white Nissan south in the northbound lane on Webster Ave. when he crashed head-on into bicyclist Devin Smith about 9 p.m., cops said. Grier had veered into the northbound lane right before the crash, police sources said.
He then sped off, only to slam into the back of an unoccupied NYPD SUV parked further down Webster Ave., cops said.
Devin was rushed to Jacobi Medical Center with a broken right leg, punctured lung and a serious head injury, and remains in critical condition, his mother, Marisol Velez, 32, told The News Saturday.
“He’s responsive, he’s responding to touch, but he still has a severe brain injury,” she said, adding, “They’re draining fluid from his head.”
“I haven’t left my son’s side,” the distraught Velez said. “It’s hard to see your son like that and you can’t do nothing about it.”
According to Velez, those with her son have alleged Grier “had stopped, turned on his high beamers and floored it.”
“I have no idea, he doesn’t know my son,” Velez said, lamenting Grier “did not care when he hit my son, he kept it moving ... he doesn’t care about anyone.”
EMS also took Grier, who suffered minor injuries, to Jacobi Medical Center. Police charged him with leaving the scene of an accident, reckless endangerment and resisting arrest, and he was ordered released without bail during his arraignment Thursday. Two passengers in the Nissan were taken in for questioning but not charged.
But Velez questioned why Grier was free at all.
“Justice would be that he serves time in jail,” she told The News, adding: “He intentionally hit my son, there’s no ifs ands or buts. My son flew 70 feet in the air. His bike split into two.”
“He has friends everywhere, he’s a great kid, and for that to happen to him,” she said, her voice breaking with emotion. “He dresses up as characters just to entertain kids at their birthday parties,” she recounted.
“He’s my best friend, and that’s why I’m going to get justice for my son,” she declared.
On the night he died, Kahlik Grier had been playing video games at a friend’s apartment in his building. He left a little before midnight and was heading up the stairs when he was gunned down by Orlando Benn, 19, who was fleeing after blasting two other young men moments earlier at a house party on another floor, police said.
“[The gunman] heads down the stairs then encounters, a floor down, our 16-year-old victim and shoots him one time in the neck,” then NYPD Chief of Detectives Rodney Harrison said following the January shooting. “We believe [the victim] was unfortunately in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Kahlik Grier was rushed to Jacobi Medical Center but could not be saved.
When Deshaun Grier arrived at the building that night, cops protecting the crime scene found a pistol on him, cops said, adding he was hit with a gun-possession charge, but wasn’t involved in the shooting.
Police investigating Kahlik’s killing arrested Desire Louree, 19, a few days later for setting up the house-party shooting, officials said. Four days after that, a 15-year-old boy was similarly charged.
Benn, a member of a gang known as FNO, was arrested Jan. 31 and charged with murder, attempted murder and manslaughter, cops said.